Yes And Does Not Work in the Boardroom
Improv rules are great for comedy night. They are terrible for budget season.
Someone told me once that the secret to great leadership communication was "yes, and." 🎠So I tried it. My CFO said "this project is over budget" and I said "yes, and we have identified three areas where we can recover margin in Q3." Sounds great right? Except what he heard was "yes I am over budget and now I am going to talk for a while." He did not want improv. He wanted a number, a plan, and a date. In that order. I gave him a scene partner moment. He wanted a spreadsheet.
The improv-to-leadership pipeline has produced some truly terrible advice. 😤 Be spontaneous. Read the room. Build on what others say. These are wonderful skills for a Thursday night comedy show. They are career-ending habits in a room full of executives who have eleven minutes between meetings and zero patience for collaborative discovery. Leaders do not need to be spontaneous. They need to be ready. Ready means you already know the three things your audience cares about and you can say them without thinking because you thought about them yesterday.
The best communicators I have ever worked with are the least spontaneous people in the room. 🧠They are quiet until it is their turn. Then they say the exact right thing. Then they stop. That is not improv. That is preparation disguised as confidence. And it is the only kind of confidence that actually gets budgets approved. 💪